The trial launch of Russia’s first floating NPP (FNPP), the Akademik Lomonosov, will take place at the end of this year with the physical start up of reactor facilities and subsequent tests which will continue until March 2019, according to Vitaliy Trutnev, the head of the Directorate for the Construction and Operation of Floating Nuclear Thermal Power Plants (a branch of Rosenergoatom).
Work remains on schedule, Trutnev told journalists on 31 August. Depending on the weather conditions and the ice conditions on the Northern Sea Route in August or September 2019, the FNPP will be towed from Murmansk to Pevek in the Arctic northeast, where coastal infrastructure facilities are being completed. Fuel loading is now underway in Murmansk.
Akademik Lomonosov is the lead project of a series of mobile transportable low-power units. Its two KLT-40S reactor installations have a total capacity of more than 70MWe or 159MWt. OKBM Afrikantov is the chief designer, manufacturer and complete equipment supplier of these reactor units including control systems, pumps, fuel handling equipment, auxiliary equipment, etc. The FNPP is intended for power supply to large industrial enterprises, port cities, or oil and gas production. The reactors were extensively tested during their use to power nuclear icebreakers during the Flax operation in the Arctic.
